


Jewel Without a Sharp Point

by willowbilly



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: 12 Days of Carnivale, Caretaking, Ficlet, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, Lullabies, Starvation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 12:34:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17043833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowbilly/pseuds/willowbilly
Summary: At Jopson's sickbed, Crozier sings him back to sleep.





	Jewel Without a Sharp Point

**Author's Note:**

> For the 12 Days of Carnivale prompt "a private performance."
> 
> The lullaby which Crozier sings and from whence I nicked the title is [Seoithín Seothó](https://songsinirish.com/seoithin-seotho-lyrics/). Is it historically accurate? I got tired of Googling and I liked this song, so let's just pretend we're sure it is and roll with it.

Crozier doesn't mean to begin humming the song in the first place, but the tune floats up from the recesses of his childhood memory as he tends to Jopson, brought to the fore by the way that patting the sweat from Jopson's brow and the hollow of his throat makes him think of his mother and his Memo Moira, and how they would sing to him as they did the same for him, the sound of their voices soothing him when he was small and fallen ill.

His own voice is rough and cracked in comparison, and does not quite recall the notes, wavering along in unsteady, wordless vocalizations which die into silence when he notices that Jopson is not asleep after all. His eyes have cracked open.

Jopson has such large, pale eyes, and in his unwellness they seem even larger and paler, the skin and flesh around them shrunken and darkened as if bruised, bringing them into prominence as if his very soul is straining to burst from the framework of his skull. They almost glow from between his slitted, gummed-up lashes like a pair of lanterns shielded by sea-glass. A delicate, translucent gray-green, their immaculate color surrounded by inverse moats of yellowed sclera and a tangle of broken blood vessels encroaching upon the sanctity of the irises like so much overgrown ivy.

“Didn't mean to disturb you with my squawking,” Crozier murmurs.

“Didn't mean to fall asleep, Captain,” Jopson says. His voice is a raspy whisper, as thin as the stray thread from Crozier's sleeve which he trimmed short against his teeth so as to make Crozier presentable. On that day so long ago, when Crozier's greatest dread was making it through a dinner with Fitzjames, before he loved and lost him; before they all lost so much, and gained so many other, far more dire worries.

And now Jopson is slipping away as well, right before him, and he cannot to do anything more than comfort him into ease.

But even now Jopson's devotion shines forth, a needy competency now trapped within the all-too-mortal confined of his disintegrating skin. Crozier can see his lantern's eyes casting about Crozier's face, as attentive to Crozier's every expression as ever. It confounds him some, Crozier knows, to be the one waited upon. To be taken care of, and to be rendered incapable of taking care of others.

There were so many nights, as Crozier was drying out, that he begged Jopson to abandon him, as sullen and prickly and petulant as a spoiled child. And yet Jopson was only ever amused at his dramatics. He remained respectful and gentle and steadfast, and nursed Crozier through his suffering with a deft, kind hand, ever loyal. Ever good.

Crozier will do everything in his power to extend Jopson the same respect, and the same kindness.

“Here,” he says. “I'll shut my mouth, let you get to sleep again.”

He's startled by the cool, tentative touch of Jopson's hand around his wrist. “Are there words to that tune?” he says, croaky-soft as frayed velvet.

“It was sung to me as a lullaby,” Crozier says. “The words are of a mother to her child, telling him that the fairies will not prevail in stealing him away from her. I can sing it to you, if you like.” To be self-deprecating, and with the aim of making Jopson smile rather than consider himself at all condescended to by the offer of having a child's lullaby directed at him, Crozier adds: “If you can withstand what passes for my singing.”

Jopson does smile, his chapped lips parting from bone-dry teeth. The movement tugs at a scab splitting his mouth and sets it to seeping, and Crozier takes a moment to dab at the little wound. Jopson allows him to do so and to draw away again before he replies.

“I'll take your squawking over the desolate refrain of the wind anytime, sir.”

Crozier chuckles. “All right. But you cannot interrupt to mock me, no matter how many of the parts I've forgot. And I expect I've forgot a great many parts. I'm not a singer, you see, neither by nature nor inclination.”

“Enough excuses, Captain,” Jopson says, smiling again. He seems to actually, honestly want to hear Crozier's singing, which is not really so surprising, Crozier supposes, upon reflection. What matters to Jopson is not Crozier's singing, but that it is Crozier doing it, and that he is doing so for Jopson.

That is gratitude, in Jopson's eyes. Immense and eternal, and for so simple a thing to give.

Something deep in Crozier's chest twists, unfurling as tender and beautiful as a blossoming rosebud.

“Fine, fine,” says Crozier, dropping the mock sternness protecting his true and truly inconsequential self-consciousness. He sets aside the washcloth and takes up Jopson's hand where it has fallen back upon the coarse blanket, chafing some warmth back into it with both of his own, and then he levels out his breath, fixes his gaze to the middle distance, and begins.

First the melody, lilted wordless and bittersweet. And then the first of the lyrics: _“_ _Seoithín seothó,_ _Mo stór é mo leanabh,_ _Mo sheod gan chealg,_ _Mo chuid den tsaol mór.”_

Seoithín seothó, My treasure is my child, My jewel without a sharp point, My part of the big world.

He sings Jopson to sleep, and then keeps singing, until his voice is as hoarse as Jopson's.

 

 


End file.
